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PASTICHES
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"Open Letter to
Survivors" by Francis
M.Nevins (EQ's Book of First Appearences 1982).
starts off with a line from "Ten Days' Wonder" (Chapter 10)
:
"... There was the case of Adelina Monquieux, his remarkable solution of
which cannot be revealed before 1972 by agreement with that curious lady's
executors..." Nevins takes it from here in this 1972 story about
a unnamed "big whodunit writer who's cleaned up umpteen cases fo the
New York force" who came to Adelina Monquieux's home. Adelina's will
stipulates that her three identical looking sons Xavier, Yves &
Zachary will get half a million dollars plus the income from another half
a million in a trust. Her niece Marie get a few hundred thousands. The
remaining twenty millions will go to charity and of course Adelaline get
murdered! The name of the sleuth is never mentioned but
is obvious.
It's a truly a pity that some of these stories are
unobtainable... Jon Breen describes 'The Persian Fez Mystery or "The
Tragedy of Q" by Joe R. Christopher as "one of the cleverest send-ups of
the Queen style. Found in 30 copy(!) chapbook "Queen's Books Investigated"
or "Queen is in the Accounting House" it reveals that Elroy Queep "..only in
his novels solved the cases before the police, in real life his suggestions
were always wrong..."
The Norwegian Apple Mystery, November,
1960 The auteur-editor appeared even less
disguised in two mysteries with a MWA background. Robert Arthur's "The
51st Sealed Room" (EQMM October 1951)
begins at an MWA meeting in New York, with a number of inside-jokes and
comments of special interest to mystery authors and goes on to murder.
There is mention of EQMM then annual contest. Also, someone who has come
up with an idea for locked room story says:"...when Carr and Queen
and the others upstairs read it, they'll wonder why they didn't think of
it themselves." |

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Alice: George, listen. Clementine was
murdered, and I Alice solves the crime, gets the story into
EQMM and...doesn't divorce George... Recognition has also come outside the field of mystery. For e.g. in the Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Field' 1954 play "Anniversary Waltz", the leading character is subjected to a barrage of questions and responds by asking "Who are you, Ellery Queen?" Or e.g. as shown in the lyrics for the Tavares hitsingle Whodunit by K.St.Louis and F.Perren: She
went dancin’ in the dark, somebody stole her heart ( References
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